Wednesday, March 28, 2018

What is "Real Budo"?

What
we do in the dojo needs to be real. It’s budo, not sport or
athletics or some kind of game. We are practicing the serious art of
controlled violence. This an art where mistakes have consequences. As
Ellis Amdur points out so well in his essay The
Real Importance Of Reishiki In Koryu,
even the little things are critical. Even in arts that don’t seem
to have any direct application in the 21st century such as naginata
or kenjutsu have to be treated as real or the true value and lessons
that the art has to teach are lost. What does it mean though, for
budo to be “real”?

For
budo to remain real, and not devolve into rhythmic gymnastics, a
mindless dance or a meaningless competition, we have to remember what
it is we are training ourselves for; at the most basic level, real
budo training treats life seriously.

Proper
keikoconstantly
reminds you how serious it is, even in the little things. All those
nit-picky little requirements about how a bokkenor
other weapon is handled, about never stepping over weapons and how
you interact with everyone in the dojoall
reflect that seriousness. Weapons, whether they are shinken(live
blades) or wooden practice pieces, are treated with full regard for
the damage they can do. Wooden practice weapons are handled just like
the real thing, because you don’t want to have sloppy or careless
habits when handling the real thing.

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Live
blades are merciless. They don’t forgive mistakes anymore than a
firearm does. For all the care I take, I’ve still cut myself a
couple of times. Those were just shallow cuts that reminded me what I
do is very serious, even when we’re not actively doing kata. Those
nitpicky teachers insisting that there is only one proper way to
handle your weapons and that even wooden swords should always be
treated like they are live are not being pedantic. They know how much
damage the weapons can do and do not want you to learn the hard way.

Humans
are liable to distraction and hurry. If we always do something the
same way, it becomes an unconscious habit and the way we do things
even when we are distracted. If you start out with a bokkenor
iaitoand
always handle it like a shinken,
then you will handle the shinken
properly
when your teacher hands it to you. When I started iai, I did so with
an iaito. A couple of years later we had a new student
join the dojo who didn’t have his own iaito yet. While he was
waiting for his iaito to arrive, Takada Sensei walked over to me one
day, undid his sageo, took his shinkenout
of his obi,
handed it to me and said “Give your iaito to him and you practice
with this until his iaito arrives.” Sensei didn’t give me any
special instruction about how to handle his shinken,
he just handed it to me and went on teaching the new student. Sensei
was confident that I had absorbed the lessons about proper weapons
handling from training correctly with the iaito.

Takada
Sensei was confident that his teaching had prepared me to handle a
shinkenwithout
giving me any additional warnings. The kata teaching method works
well. I handled Sensei’s shinkenthe
same way I handled my iaitoand
didn’t have any issues with it. The proper technique was ingrained
to the point of unconscious competence and came forth from my hands
naturally and easily.

Even
when it is not shinken
shobu,
budo must be treated with the seriousness of a shinken.We
train seriously with wood and bamboo weapons so that when the moment
comes and we find ourselves holding the real thing, when it’s not
kata but life, the right things happen without conscious effort. The
little things are the big things.

Reishiki,
the
etiquette that starts and ends each practice and regulates behavior
during practice, is filled with little lessons that turn out to be
big lessons. Paying attention to these details is the first step in
keeping budo from degenerating into a pleasantly distracting sport.
All those details that your teacher spends time on aren’t
decorations of the important stuff that is practiced. They are
important in their own right. Treating your teachers, your training
partners, juniors, seniors, properly is filled with lessons for how
you deal with real life.

Treating
people with genuine respect and honor is an elemental lesson of real
budo. This isn’t the casual respect of sport. This is serious. Look
at the bow between training partners in arts like Shinto Muso Ryu and
Tendo Ryu. In these arts the bow is respectful not only of the
partner, but also of the partner’s ability and potential as an
adversary. Training partners bow to each other, but they never give
up their ability to move or take their attention from their partner.

Not
paying attention is not just another way of not showing
respect. It also creates the first opening in you. This may not seem
as real or important as the actual techniques, but if you’re not
giving proper attention to people, you won’t be ready for any sort
of attack.

Showing
respect is a way of showing to those around you that you take them,
and what you are doing, seriously. Budo deals with some of the most
serious subjects; conflict, how we live and how we can die. I don’t
think it gets any more serious than this. But if you only treat your
budo as serious when you’re doing the techniques, you’re missing
the most important lessons. Yes, those techniques are serious, but
how you handle life is at least as important as how you handle your
sword.

In
budo, we learn how to handle weapons, how to handle conflict, how to
treat others, and how to handle ourselves. If we’re not treating
those things with respect, our budo isn’t real. Weapons
handling and dealing with conflict (including, of course, “fighting”)
are obvious components of budo. How we treat others and how we handle
ourselves may not be so obvious. How we deal with these lessons is
what makes the difference between real budo and play budo.

It’s
the little things that make budo real, as in bowing to our partner
with sincere respect and not just because some old custom says we
have to. How many conflicts and fights could be avoided if only
people treated others with sincere respect? Fights happen not because
people disagree, but because of how they disagree; often because
people are, or think they are, being disrespected. This makes
learning how to treat people with respect one of the most important
things we learn in the dojo. Sincere respect is a powerful technique
for preventing disagreements from escalating into violent fights
where you have to use the techniques you’ve been sweating over at
practice. Most people would prefer to not find out if their technique
is up to the challenge if they don’t have to.

Real
budo focuses on the little things, technical or otherwise. Learning
to focus on the little things includes watching what’s going on
around you and being aware of what people are doing and feeling. Is
Sensei heading for the broom closet after practice? Show you respect
him and the dojo. Get there before he does. If you see a new student
struggling with the etiquette or proper dojo behavior, don’t wait
for Sensei to show them. Talk with them before or after class and
help them figure it out. Show respect for the new student and for
what Sensei expects from everyone in the dojo.

Real
budo isn’t just being aware of the spacing between you and your
training partner, or understanding the timing for an effective
counterattack. Real budo is being aware of what makes the dojo a good
place to be, and helping to make it so without being asked or
encouraged. Real budo is being aware of the feelings and needs of
those around you, and responding appropriately. What better way to
defuse conflict before it can start than being aware of rising
tension and dispelling it while it is still only tension in the air?

It’s
a paradox of budo. Arts that teach the most effective ways destroy
life are immersed in teaching how to create better lives. This is the
heart that beats at the core of real budo. Not brutal techniques of
violence, but the subtle art of living.